


Goodnight Mi Luna

by Isaowaka



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 05:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13827642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isaowaka/pseuds/Isaowaka
Summary: There was one ability that the wraith didn’t share with people, one he kept quiet to himself. The ability to tell when someone was going to die. To feel the aches and pains of their body’s, or their souls slowly slipping away. He was used to it. At least, he was supposed to be. But what can you do when the one person who is falling away from you, is the person you love with all your heart?





	Goodnight Mi Luna

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a while and I wanted to share the feels that it inspired. Shorter then I intended but I hope you'll like it all the same.

Something that Gabriel had found to be an... Unfortunate side effect of his injections from SEP was his unnatural ability to tell if someone was about to die. Granted, all his abilities were a bit unusual to say the least. He could fucking teleport for crying out loud, or single handedly break his enter body down at a molecular level and become nothing but sentient, dark mist.

However, none of those abilities had he hated with such a passion as he had the first. He could feel someone’s pain from across the room- the shallowness of their breath, the heavy thump of an over taxed heart, even if someone’s bones were beginning to dwindle away. He felt their pain as if it was his own- his own body reflecting their agony and revealing someone’s time drawing near. In a way he found it funny, as when he was younger Gabriel had often called himself Azrael to sound cool and edgy, yet the wings of death had followed him like an over looming shadow. From his father’s freak accident, to his time in the war, and even now away from the line of fire.

He hated that branch of his powers... especially as it revealed to him the start of an agony he feared his heart couldn’t take.

It started with a cough. He had been awake beside his husband, claw like hands working in an almost mindless pace as they watched TV together. (Well, Gabriel watched. Jack listening as he read as he read his data pad, snuggled against the wraiths side.) A peaceful moment that was broken when Jack had started to cough, a wheezy aching sound that made Gabriel stop cold. It wasn’t the sound that had stopped him, but rather the weak ache he had felt in his own chest in response. 

Looking back on it, that should have been his first warning. Instead he brushed it off as denial. Brushed it off as his mind being too tired, maybe the cough had just... startled him is all. Everything would be fine.

Everything was not fine.

In fact everything only got worse from that day on. What started as a cough became... more... Jack wouldn’t admit it, that his breath was wheezing more and more. That the old soldier’s eyes were starting to fail. His joints ached, and Gabriel felt each bit of pain as if it was his own. He tried to convince himself it was. Tried to deny what he felt. Had cursed the black wings that still, even years after they had hung up their guns and masks, haunted over his very being.

He tried not to cry when he was alone, when the pain had only gotten worse and started to spread. Each beat of the heart, his veins feeling like they were on fire. The dull headache in his head, chest overheated. He felt it all and while he couldn’t say what was going on, he knew what it meant. Feebly he tried to search for someone else this pain could have belonged to, something else maybe. But they were alone besides their dogs, living on a plot of farm land miles from their nearest neighbor. And the dogs... if it had been them they would have surely been vocal.

He remembered when their little Susie has gotten a splinter in her paw and she had howled as if she was being murdered in their back yard. ("She takes after you." He remembered Jack teasing, his smirk mischievous. He wasn’t wrong; Gabriel did have a flare for drama.)

No. He knew where the pain came from the moment he had first heard that cough. First felt it in his own chest like shredded glass. His husband, ever the stubborn on, baring all this pain without saying a thing. Gabriel tried to make things easier on the old solider. He got up early and made him breakfast every day, did small task to try and make things... less complicated as he held in this truth. 

He wondered if Jack knew. If this was a truth they both were accepting in silence, trying not to burden the other with worry. It was like Jack anyway, always wanting to carry his own weight.

That is, until he couldn’t. Until Jack had fainted going down the stairs. The day had been a blur for Gabriel but he remembered catching him before Jack hit the floor, the pain having swelled in intensity. He remembered getting Jack to the hospital but not quiet how. They admitted Jack, Gabriel staying after his side long after visiting hours were over. Listening to the steady beat of the heart monitor, the drip of the IV.

When Jack came through they had met each other’s eyes. Gabriel had tried to smile but... they both knew. He could see it now. They both knew even if it was never said.

The doctors did their test, but they never could place what was going on. Never an official name. The soldiers knew what it was though. They had both seen it before in SEP after the injections were done. They didn’t need a name. They had stayed until Jack had quite frankly had enough. There was nothing the doctors could really do besides suit him up on pain killers, and that wasn’t the end Jack wanted. 

"Take me home." The ex-solider had said, his pale eyes meeting Gabriel’s red ones. "I want to go home."

How could the wraith say no to that? He undid the machines and they left through a shadow step, coming back home where they belonged. Their time was limited, but they made the best of it. Played with the dogs, went horseback riding, slept in each other’s arms. 

Jack grew weaker, the pain becoming more intense. The second last day, he couldn’t leave their bed. The wraith watched over him more intently, served him diligently. Jack had never needed to ask for anything, Gabriel would provide while swallowing down his own grief until... until he was alone.

They both knew when it was the last day. Jack had wordlessly given Gabriel his data pad. "Send these out for me?" Gabriel didn’t need to look to know what was on the data pad. When to send them out. Good bye letters... the wraith had only nodded before they snuggled against each other, the grains of sand falling softly with each passing moment.

"I love you Jack." Gabriel had reminded repeatedly, each time met with a soft reassuring reply until Jack felt too weak to respond. He held the wraiths cold hand tight in his own, leaning up for one more kiss.

"I'm sorry." The solider whispered, and it took everything in Gabriel not to cry at the raw emotion burned into Jacks words. It hurt even more because Gabriel didn’t know what to say besides a weak "It'll be okay, you'll see." That somehow made Jack smile as his eyes lulled close.

Gabriel stroked his cheek gently. "Goodnight Mi Luna." He whispered, feeling Jacks soul glow in his chest. "Sweet dreams my love..." 

He felt his heart come to a gentle rest, his breathing slow to a still end. Gabriel could feel Jacks soul struggling to linger... he could have taken it as his own... but he didn’t want to deny Jack the chance of a peaceful end. He held him until close and tight until all he knew of Jack was gone from this world- the man he loved now nothing more than a cold corpse. It was then, and only then, he allowed himself to cry. To mourn. To grief. 

Everything came as a blur to him again, of cleaning Jacks body one finally time, carrying him to his favorite hill and burying him under the moonlight. Of inscribing a slab of stone with his own talons to make a grave. Of planting flowers over the freshly turned dirt. He didn’t remember how long it took him to mourn over Jacks lose, after everything they had been through. It took him even longer to accept that he was gone. It got to the point where Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the same bed they had shared, and instead often slept downstairs with their three pups. 

Years passed, and slowly the pain wrapped around his heart started to ease bit by bit. As the years dragged on, the hill became populated by the graves of their dogs as well as his love. He tried not to think of how long it had been since Jacks passing, but on some nights he found himself drawn to Jacks thinks- his mask or old pulse rifle. Sometimes he’d find himself cleaning it, or rearranging Jacks desk as if he was going to be back soon. Sometimes he would go up to that hill and lay beside the garden of fresh flowers, speak to someone who could no longer hear his voice under the cold moon light. Gabriel couldn’t tell in those moments of grief and acceptance if he was talking to the grave or the moon itself. Sometimes he would take out the data pad and read over the message Jack had written for him, cherishing these last words from beyond the grave.

How many years had passed, how long had he been alone there on that plot on land besides the occasional guest? Normally people, strangers, left him alone... which was why it surprised him that a grey, beat up jeep came up his long drive way. He set his cup of coffee down and came to the porch, eyes narrowed unsurely as he watched the car turn off and the driver’s side door open. 

A young, pale man stepped out, and Gabriel could hardly believe his eyes... he had accepted that he would live on alone a long time ago, unable to die or move on... and yet there, coming towards his house with a familiar warm smile, hair as gold as the sun and eyes as blue as the sky, was his Jack.

Again he wanted to deny it, a moment of wishful thinking, a dream. Then the other spoke and the wraith almost sobbed.

"I’m home, miss me?"


End file.
